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Everybody Throw Your L's Up -- Reggaeton Brings Out Latino Pride

A young Latina says reggaeton music is bringing out a kind of pan-Latino pride among a group long separated by nationality.

By Elizabeth Gonzalez, New America Media

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Feb 27, 2006 - Last year, I didn't even know who "Daddy Yankee" was and reggaetón wasn't even in my vocabulary. Little did I know then that pretty soon I would start singing "Who's this? Daddy Yankee!" and "Gasolina!" with the rest of the Latinos across the United States.

Reggaetón has brought another Latino music explosion to the United States, making everyone proud to be Latino. At first, I thought it was a fast burning fad that would surely kill itself, like Ricky Martin's "Vida Loca" and "Jenny From the Block" fever. But reggaeton just keeps going and getting more top artists from all genres involved in it, and not speaking Spanish isn't holding anyone back. Even Britney Spears songs are starting to include reggaetón beats and 50 Cent, Wyclef Jean and Fat Joe have all featured reggaeton star Tego Calderon on tracks.

But beyond its rising crossover popularity on radio, reggaeton has been able to do something unique to the various, diverse, and sometimes conflicting Latin American populations -- bring us together.

Although reggaetón seems like something new to many people, it has been around for years. It is the product of Jamaican reggae and dance hall, taken to Panama when Jamaican workers helped to build the Panama Canal. Later it was infused with the sounds of bomba and plena from Puerto Rico and hip hop from the United States. The music generally has raps in Spanish.

What distinguishes reggaeton from previous "Latino explosions" is that it is the first pan-Latino American musical movement that I can think of. The term "Latino" itself is a bit misleading in that it lumps many different nationalities and cultures under one umbrella, yet we have always retained a very strict separation by nationality. The United States and mainstream sees us as all the same, but we don't always see our similarities. We are separated by language, class, how long we've been in the United States, and how we got here in the first place.

Many Mexicans believe we were already here with "the border crossed us" mentality, when we are usually the only ones associated with the words "illegal alien." Cubans are deemed as the most welcomed Latinos in the United States because of the long-standing fight to the death against communism. Puerto Ricans are on the other end, are called American citizens already, but not quite accepted. Other people coming from Central America such as Salvadoreños, escaped the atrocities of Civil War to the same country that funded their misery. South Americans take the longest journey, but some of them are known for thinking they are above the rest of us. Even if no one really carries out any actions you still carry ideas that those other Latinos are a certain way.

Within the Latino community, it is not enough to say, "Oh yeah, I'm Latino," because the answer doesn't stop there. It is always followed by, but where are you from?

This music though, isn't just about Boricuas or New York, it extends from the islands through the American continents down through Argentina. Despite our differences, reggeaton has given us all a way to dance to the same song.

The songs are high energy and all about moving your body to the rhythm. Although I wouldn't go around repeating most of the lyrics that are about slappin' ass and taking off your clothes, the music accomplishes its purpose of making me want to dance.

The reggaetón movement even encourages people to throw up something other than gang signs. There are plenty of L's (shaping the letter with your fingers) in the air at the concerts to represent Latino pride.

Over the past few months, I found myself at several reggaetón concerts around the bay, when usually the only concerts I ever got excited over were for Spanish rock bands. There I was hoping I didn't look dumb doing the "perreo" - the way you dance reggaetón. These were the first concerts I have been to where the Boricuas, Dominicanos, Chapines, Mexicanos, Colombianos were all hanging out. And at the last concert, although the artists like Ivy Queen and Tego Calderon, were Boricuas, the Salvadoreños were the biggest group there. After all, the concert was in San Francisco. People even brought their countries' flags with them, holding on to them like capes, or smaller sizes they held up in their arms, representing all of Latin America -- and it wasn't anyone's independence day. People generations deep in the United States are at the concerts, as well as those trying to settle in. I've met people from the other side of the bay and the other side of the Americas. It's cool not to be able to immediately categorize a person upon looking at them, it might teach us not to.

Whatever we as Latinos choose to identify as -- Reggaetón is what is making it apparent that Latino's are not just Mexicans in the West Coast of the United States and Puerto Rican's on the East Coast. There is enough thrown at us to divide us, like our internal racism, or our negative attitudes toward our people who just arrived, because we're forced to forget our customs and they serve to remind us that. If we can gather under something as a unified group let it be to get together and have fun. Let it be us singing and dancing.

Elizabeth Gonazalez, 25, is a writer for Silicon Valley De-Bug (www.siliconvalleydebug.org), a project of New America Media.